Lammy Spotlight: "Performing Queer Latinidad"
Performing Queer Latinidad is our third finalist in the 25th Annual Lambda Literary Awards, celebrating excellence in writing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender subjects. In Performing Queer Latinidad, Ramon Rivera-Servera deconstructs a crucial period of change in a queer subculture Latina/o culture in the United States as it expanded and gained influence in the 1990s and early 2000s. The social event of performance became a foothold in urban centers against intolerance in the double dose of homophobia and xenophobia. Focusing most specifically on the influences of dance and choreography, including dancer Arthur Aviles and musical styles such as Karamba and Reggaetón, the book is a social history of protest and community.
"Latina/o queer performance engages past aesthetic and political legacies, as well as historical traumas and conflicts, to practice new ways of being and being together, Latina/o and queer," Rivera-Servera writes in his introduction. "The artists, activists, and social dancers discussed in this book have carried forth, in performance, critical embodied knowledge and affective resources that are likely to remain significant understandings and figurations of queer latinidad into the future."
Read finalist in LGBT studies Performing Queer Latinidad, and watch for the Lambda Literary Award announcements in June!
